Alaska is also on the front lines of climate change where July 2019 set a record for the state’s hottest month on record. Scorching temperatures illustrate that not only, are humans, for better or worse, making history but because sea ice in the Arctic is critical to life, we are witnesses to the first visible signs of a collapsing arctic ecosystem including gray whale, ice seal, salmon and reindeer die-offs.
While walrus, sometimes congregating in the tens of thousands, they have been hauling out on the beach at Point Lay, Alaska almost every year since 2007, due to the disappearance of their usual sea ice habitat. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, thousands of walruses hauled out on the beach in late July – the earliest ever. The walrus congregations can number in the tens of thousands, with up to 40,000 animals estimated at a time.
The community water supply of the Village of Nanwalek, located within the Kachemak Bay watershed, was impacted by drought in Southcentral Alaska over the past month requiring the village to have water flown in to off-set the water shortage. Late last month, the village’s reservoir was drying out so rapidly, that the city had to shut the water off at 9 pm every night and leave it off until 9am every morning.
As the water situation continued to deteriorate, a member of the Nanwalek city council searched for an alternate potable water source on Google Earth and located one on nearby St. John Mountain. Then the city dug a trench from the new water sources to the city’s reservoir so the new source could replenish the reservoir. After a month with out rain, on August 20 it finally came to Nanwalek and the village is waiting to see if rain and new water supply will address the water shortage for now.
According to the Leo Network Newsletter for August, as of the end of August, the Kachemak Bay Mountain Range that surrounds Nanwalek was devoid of snow pack and the “total precipitation June 1 to August 20, is only 1.01 inches, far below the average of over six inches for June – August.”
Similarly, dry weather and low snowpack have reduced the amount of water in Lily Lake which is the main source of water for the town of Haines, to historically low levels this summer. The municipal water department is working around the clock to keep water flowing down the line. But the amount of water in the lake is not keeping up with demand.
In the end of August myself, my wife Jessica and our neighbors were dropped off at the Jakolof Bay public boat dock by the water Taxi with our sea kayaks. We paddled to the head of the Bay where we beached the kayaks to walk a short way up the mouth of Jakolof Creek, to view several pools full of stranded Pink Salmon and some minnows probably Coho Smolts resulting from extremely dry conditions in the Kachemak Bay Watershed this summer. After leaving the mouth we walked along the road to the Red Mountain trail head until it connected with the Creek again about 2/3 of a mile up from the mouth were the Creek was bone dry for as far as the eye could see.
Unusually hot and dry weather this year as resulted in Jakolof Creek running completely dry starting in mid-July all the way up to the switchbacks and is still receding. Similarly, portions of nearby Kingfisher Creek are currently running dry.
As of this writing, all that remains of the creeks are intermittent pools of water containing stranded Coho smolt and some pinks, dogs, and Dolly Varden which are dying in these rapidly receding pools. Some small bears, eagles, and other birds are feeding on these fish but there are still many that are not getting used. According to Michael Ophiem, environmental program Director for the Seldovia Village Tribe: “We will certainly see the damage done in the upcoming years. This run of fish has been used for a resource for those who live in the area for many years. Some people who don’t have access to boats to get to other fishing sites are more heavily reliant on this run than others.”
This is the second time in 4 years that Jakolof Creek has dried up resulting in a mass die-off of all of the fish in the system at the time. Because streams within the Kachemak Bay Watershed are primarily fed by snow melt, they are extremely sensitive to winters with little snow and followed by hot dry summers which, like Jackolof can result in no water being available at critical times for fish and wildlife or too much water during winter months that can cause flooding or scouring of stream beds.
According to Micheal Brubaker, Editer of the Leo Network newsletter in regards to the Creek, “another year with a lost generation of salmon and other fish. The one difference this year is that the returns (at least so far) of pinks are smaller and the creek appears to have dried up two weeks earlier. This raises concerns not only about the future of this stream as a salmon spawning location but also about food security for the area….”
My wife Jessica and I spent a weekend last July in Hope, Alaska in order to get away from computers for a couple of days and enjoy one of our favorite escapes in one of the most picturesque places in the state. As we set up camp, we were alarmed by the number of birch trees with brown leaves. Weeks of drought due to a high pressure system that’s brought record-breaking heat has deflect storm systems farther north, preventing rainfall throughout the Kenai Peninsula and drying out the plant life. During a couple of hikes along the trails outside the campground it was evident that not only the trees had been affected. Fern, Devils club, fire weed and other plants were shriveled and dying.
While extreme drought is commonplace these days in the lower 48, the phenomenon has been all but unheard-of in Alaska…until this summer. For the second month in a row, at our house, we have been rationing water due to weeks without rain and increasingly diminishing re-charge of a shared well. The drought is similarly affecting Southcentral Alaskan communities that rely on snow pack and rain water for water.
According to a recent article in the Anchorage Daily News, entire forests in Southeast “are falling prey to spruce bark beetles and hemlock sawflys, which are taking advantage of a lack of rainfall and higher than average temperatures.” Similarly, while dry weather has also forced cuts in hydropower production in South central Alaska, an atmospheric river, consisting of a deluge of rain water from the tropical Pacific Ocean, has been drenching northern sections of Alaska and similarly disrupting hydropower and other infrastructure in that area.
In early July, I headed out with a research team from the Native Village of Elim to the Vulcan Creek gage site (30 miles up the Tubutulik River in Western Alaska) to install a new Level & Barrow Logger which collect stream depth and temperature continuously to re-place damaged equipment from a couple of years earlier. There was a pressing need to install the new equipment because we had heard reports just a few days previously of large salmon die-offs in the Shaktoolik and Unalakleet due to temperatures reported to be as high as 70 – 90°F and lower water levels, most likely resulting in low dissolved oxygen in shallow sections of rivers and the suffocation of fish.
As expected, while traveling to the stream flow measuring Gage Site the River, we observed hundreds of otherwise healthy (not spawned-out) dead fish including Pink and Chum salmon and white fish. When we got to the gage site we took temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO) readings indicating the water was between 61– 64 degrees and DO as low as 8 milligrams per liter (a healthy stream should be 9 milligrams per liter or higher) When we returned to the gage site a few weeks later, we collected more data that showed temperature stayed high (around 58-60 degrees for the next several days before dropping down to a more normal 54 degrees.
Wes Jones, Development Director for Research with the Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation’s Fisheries says the scope of the “larger than normal salmon die-off last month covered several communities from east to west in the Norton Sound region” including Kotlik, Elim, Unalakleet, Shaktoolik, Golovin, Kotlik, Alakanuk and Akyak. Jones says that although salmon die-offs often occur naturally, “for this many to die so early in the spawning season could be a tipping point indicating a larger ecosystem shift in the Norton Sound region as a result of warming waters.”
Salmon streams in the Norton Sound region, however, were not the only ones affected by Alaska’s summer of 2019 heat wave. In early July, temperatures over 81 F were recorded in southcentral Alaska. This resulted, in salmon spawning stream temperatures exceeding 80 degrees for the first time ever. One such river – the Deshka produces more than 20% of the chinook escapements for the Susitna River watershed which drains the Alaskan Mountain Range.
Other rivers on the Kenai Peninsula similarly set temperature records in July. The Anchor River, for example, was recorded at 73 degrees. For spawning adult salmon or growing juvenile, temperatures above 80 degrees can be lethal, primarily due to the loss of oxygen in the water and the fact that warm water makes fish lethargic and, therefore, susceptible to predation. High temperatures and drought conditions combined with low snow pack this summer, caused the Jackoloff River on the other side of Kachemak Bay from my home to dry up completely for the second time in four yours, resulting in a die-off of Pink salmon returning to spawn and Silver smolts trapped in rapidly diminishing pools of water.
In short, it’s time to stop sugar coating it and accept the fact that Alaska’s freshwater ecosystems are collapsing – and it’s our carbon addicted society that’s causing it. According to Peter Westley, assistant professor of fisheries conservation and fisheries ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the state’s fish die-off is “directly in line with the predictions of what scientists…have been warning is likely to occur, and we need to prepare ourselves and not be surprised when it happens again in the future, because it will.” Only problem, according to Sue Mauger, Science Director with Cook Inlete Keeper, is that “We’re 50 years ahead of where we thought they would be.”
We should realize that we probably cannot stop the freshwater habitat collapse from occurring but maybe we can slow it down. One strategy comes from Stephanie Quinn-Davison, Director ofthe Yukon River Inter-Tribal fish commission. who suggests initiating a network of locals from native village communities to monitor temperature, low flows, dissolved oxygen in nearby rivers to try and anticipate salmon die-offs before they occur. Similarly, calling it a “water emergency” for south central Alaska, the Leo Network is tracking impacts from the regional drought and request that Network members post observation to the website. Finally, Michael Ophiem with the Seldovia Village Tribe says that they have begun identifying habitat in the Jackaloff Creek watershed were water levels and temperature are currently adequate for salmon spawning and plan to purchase a wet incubator for out-planting eggs to those areas.
For our part, WPC will continue to assist with salmon die-off monitoring by collecting more data on water temperature, dissolved oxygen and flow levels for several villages in the Norton Sound Region this summer and next. Also, we would like to work with federal, state city and/or tribal governments, conservation organizations and other stakeholder located to develop rapid assessment capability and understanding watershed responses to extreme events including heavy precipitation and drought conditions. If you need assistance with stream monitoring or are interested in participating in the rapid assessment efforts please contact WPC at hal@waterpolicyconsulting.com or (907)491-1355.
